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Replication Files for: Communicating the Politics of the Law: Legal and Legislative Rhetoric about High Court Decisions

Albert H. Rivero (albert.rivero@virginia.edu) -- University of Virginia 
Andrew R. Stone (arstone@olemiss.edu) -- University of Mississippi

This version: February 2026, v. 1.0

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This repository contains the data and code necessary to replicate the analyses in the manuscript and supplementary material.

The analysis was conducted in R (version 4.4.2) running on macOS Tahoe (version 26.3).

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Contents

Data:
	abortion_paragraph_level_data.RData
	abortion_release_level_data.RData
	abortion_senator_level_data.RData
	paragraph_level_data.RData
	release_level_data.RData
	senator_level_data.RData
	top_cases_final.csv
	topic_model_objects.RData

Code:
	politics_of_law_analysis_main_text.R
	politics_of_law_analysis_appendix.R


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The following files are necessary to replicate the listed figure/tables in the article. 

*** Figure 1 ***
*** Table 1 ***

release_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_main_text.R

*** Table 2 ***

senator_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_main_text.R

*** Table 3 ***

abortion_paragraph_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_main_text.R

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The following files are necessary to replicate the listed tables in the supplementary materials. 

*** Tables E.1, F.1-F.4 ***

senator_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_appendix.R

*** Tables E.2, H.4, H.5 ***

abortion_paragraph_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_appendix.R

*** Table H.1 ***

Please note that topic_model_objects.RData contains the extracted results from the topic model we run. We do not provide the full text of the press releases the topic model is run on due to data resharing limitations.

abortion_paragraph_level_data.RData
topic_model_objects.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_appendix.R

*** Tables H.2, H.3 ***

abortion_release_level_data.RData
abortion_senator_level_data.RData
politics_of_law_analysis_appendix.R

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The following R packages are necessary to replicate the analyses in the article and supplementary materials. 

lfe (version 3.1.1); rms (version 7.0-0); stargazer (version 5.2.3); tidyverse (2.0.0); xtable (version 1.8-4) 

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The following variables are used in the analyses found in the paper and supplementary materials.

*** abortion_paragraph_level_data.RData ***

last.name: Senator last name.
majority_party: Binary measure of whether the senator is in the majority party or not.
seniority: Count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
seniority.squared: Square of count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
freshman: Binary measure of whether the senator is a freshman or not.
senator_lawyer: Binary measure of whether the senator is a lawyer or not.             on_sjc: Binary measure of whether the senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee or not.
message_length: Length (in characters) of the paragraph.
log_message_length: Logged length (in characters) of the paragraph.
marginal: Binary measure of whether the senator is marginal or not, senators are marginal if the senator’s party’s presidential candidate received less than 50 percent of the two-party vote share in the senator’s state in the last election. 
log_previous_vote_share: Log of senator's vote share in most recent election.       up_for_election: Binary measure of whether the senator is up for election in that year or not (retiring incumbents are coded as not up for election).
republican: Binary measure of whether senator is a Republican or not.
post_2018: Binary measure of whether the observation is from after 2018 or not.
republican_post_2018: Interaction of republican and post_2018 measures, takes a value of 1 if observation is from after 2018 and senator is a Republican and 0 otherwise.
extremity: Absolute value of senator's first-dimension Common-Space Constant DW-NOMINATE score.                year: Year of observation.
two.letter.state.abbreviation: Senator two-letter state abbreviation.
year_factor: Factorized version of year of observation.
state_factor: Factorized version of Senator two-letter state abbreviation.
legal_language: Binary measure of whether the paragraph uses legal language, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.2 for more details.              act: Binary measure of whether the paragraph uses legislative language, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.3 for more details.  
doc_id: Unique press release document identifier. 
doc_id_para: Unique press release document paragraph identifier.  

*** abortion_release_level_data.RData ***

last.name: Senator last name.
majority_party: Binary measure of whether the senator is in the majority party or not.
seniority: Count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
seniority.squared: Square of count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
freshman: Binary measure of whether the senator is a freshman or not.
senator_lawyer: Binary measure of whether the senator is a lawyer or not.             on_sjc: Binary measure of whether the senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee or not.
log_sum_message_length: Logged length (in characters) of the press release.
marginal: Binary measure of whether the senator is marginal or not, senators are marginal if the senator’s party’s presidential candidate received less than 50 percent of the two-party vote share in the senator’s state in the last election. 
up_for_election: Binary measure of whether the senator is up for election in that year or not (retiring incumbents are coded as not up for election).
republican: Binary measure of whether senator is a Republican or not.
post_2018: Binary measure of whether the observation is from after 2018 or not.
extremity: Absolute value of senator's first-dimension Common-Space Constant DW-NOMINATE score.                year: Year of observation.
two.letter.state.abbreviation: Senator two-letter state abbreviation.
legal_language: Binary measure of whether the press release uses legal language, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.2 for more details.  
legal_language_prop: Proportion of paragraphs in the press release that use legal language.           act: Binary measure of whether the press release uses legislative language, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.3 for more details.   
act_prop: Proportion of paragraphs in the press release that use legislative language.
doc_id: Unique press release document identifier.

*** abortion_senator_level_data.RData ***

last.name: Senator last name.
majority_party: Binary measure of whether the senator is in the majority party or not.
seniority: Count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
seniority.squared: Square of count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
freshman: Binary measure of whether the senator is a freshman or not.
senator_lawyer: Binary measure of whether the senator is a lawyer or not.             on_sjc: Binary measure of whether the senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee or not.
log_sum_message_length: Logged length (in characters) of the senator's abortion press releases in that year.
marginal: Binary measure of whether the senator is marginal or not, senators are marginal if the senator’s party’s presidential candidate received less than 50 percent of the two-party vote share in the senator’s state in the last election. 
up_for_election: Binary measure of whether the senator is up for election in that year or not (retiring incumbents are coded as not up for election).
republican: Binary measure of whether senator is a Republican or not.
post_2018: Binary measure of whether the observation is from after 2018 or not.
extremity: Absolute value of senator's first-dimension Common-Space Constant DW-NOMINATE score.                year: Year of observation.
two.letter.state.abbreviation: Senator two-letter state abbreviation.
legal_language: Binary measure of whether the senator uses legal language in an abortion press release that year, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.2 for more details.  
legal_language_prop: Proportion of paragraphs in the senator's abortion press releases from that year that use legal language.           act: Binary measure of whether the senator uses legislative language in an abortion press release that year, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section D.3 for more details.   
act_prop: Proportion of paragraphs in the senator's abortion press releases from that year that use legislative language.

*** paragraph_level_data.RData ***
last.name: Senator last name.
abortion: Binary measure of whether the paragraph is from a press release that mentions an abortion case. 
doc_id: Unique press release document identifier.
doc_id_para: Unique press release document paragraph identifier. 

*** release_level_data.RData ***

last.name: Senator last name.
doc_id: Unique press release document identifier.
year: Year of observation.
two.letter.state.abbreviation: Senator two-letter state abbreviation.
Party: Senator partisan identification (Democrat, Independent, or Republican).                    case_name: Name of Supreme Court case.
explicit_mention: Binary measure of whether press release explicitly mentions a Supreme Court case name, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section B.1 for more details.
explicit_or_keyword_mention: Binary measure of whether press release explicitly mentions a Supreme Court case name or uses key words in particular Supreme Court terms, as determined by our search process. Please see Appendix Section B.1 for more details.

*** senator_level_data.RData ***

last.name: Senator last name.
case_messages: Number of press releases senator issued about cases in that year.
log_message_length: Logged length (in characters) of press releases senator issued about cases in that year.
any_case_message: Binary measure of whether senator issued any press releases about cases in that year.
republican: Binary measure of whether senator is a Republican or not.
post_2018: Binary measure of whether the observation is from after 2018 or not.
majority_party: Binary measure of whether the senator is in the majority party or not.
marginal: Binary measure of whether the senator is marginal or not, senators are marginal if the senator’s party’s presidential candidate received less than 50 percent of the two-party vote share in the senator’s state in the last election. 
up_for_election: Binary measure of whether the senator is up for election in that year or not (retiring incumbents are coded as not up for election).
extremity: Absolute value of senator's first-dimension Common-Space Constant DW-NOMINATE score.
on_sjc: Binary measure of whether the senator is on the Senate Judiciary Committee or not.
senator_lawyer: Binary measure of whether the senator is a lawyer or not.
seniority: Count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
seniority.squared: Square of count of number of Congresses senator has served in Senate.
freshman: Binary measure of whether the senator is a freshman or not.
case_count: Count of number of cases originating from senator's state heard by Supreme Court that term.
log_previous_vote_share: Log of senator's vote share in most recent election.
year: Year of observation.
two.letter.state.abbreviation: Senator two-letter state abbreviation.

*** top_cases_final.csv ***

case_name: Name of Supreme Court case.
conservative_decision: Coding of whether the case was decided in a conservative direction or not. Codings taken from the Supreme Court Database, with three exceptions: we code Burwell v. Hobby Lobby as conservative, California v. Texas as liberal, and Trump v. United States as conservative.

*** terms_tbl (loaded from topic_model_objects.RData) ***

words: 6 most likely terms for each topic from the topic model.
topic: Topic number.

*** topics_tbl (loaded from topic_model_objects.RData) ***

topic: Most likely topic for the document paragraph, as determined by the topic model.
doc_id_para: Unique press release document paragraph identifier.
